The Customer Data Platform Report 2025

By Twilio Segment

Welcome to the latest edition of the Customer Data Platform report, an in-depth look into how customer data is powering customer engagement around the world.

The tools businesses rely on to meet evolving customer expectations are more connected than ever. On the Twilio platform, trillions of data points flow through analytics, advertising, customer success, personalization, and more, powering seamless, data-driven customer experiences

But which categories matter most? The most connected tools reflect where businesses are prioritizing investment:

• Analytics (Google Analytics, Mixpanel) for deep behavioral insights.
• Warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery) as the system of record.
• Advertising (Meta Ads, Google Ads) for privacy-first targeting.
• Raw Data (Amazon S3) for flexible storage and custom applications.
• Email Marketing (Braze, Iterable) for personalized engagement.
• Heatmaps & Recordings (Hotjar, FullStory) to refine user experiences.
• Customer Success (Zendesk, Gainsight) to drive retention.
• CRM (Intercom, HubSpot, Salesforce) for tracking and personalization.

Analytics remains the most widely adopted destination category on the Twilio Segment platform, underscoring its critical role in modern customer engagement strategies. This year, Mixpanel leads the pack, connected by 66.2% of Twilio users, solidifying its dominance as a top choice for businesses focused on product analytics and behavioral insights.

Meanwhile, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) continues its rapid adoption, now used by 53.5% of Twilio customers, as businesses adapt to an event-based, privacy-first approach to tracking. While GA4 is gaining ground, Google Universal Analytics (UA) is still actively connected by 48.3% of users—though its phase-out has pushed many companies to accelerate their migration strategies.

Further down, Amplitude (25.9%) and Heap (12.0%) maintain strong footholds in product and digital experience analytics.

A CDP enriches analytics platforms with unified, real-time customer profiles, allowing businesses to go beyond passive reporting—enabling smarter audience segmentation, real-time activation, and continuous experimentation to drive growth.

Data warehouses have become indispensable in the era of big data, serving as centralized repositories where vast amounts of structured and unstructured data are stored and managed. They enable organizations to consolidate information from various sources, providing a unified view that supports advanced analytics, business intelligence, and informed decision-making.

But their role has evolved. No longer just repositories for historical data, modern cloud-based warehouses like Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift are now designed to handle real-time data processing, enabling businesses to power advanced analytics and machine learning models at scale.

Despite their power, warehouses were never designed to solve every data challenge alone. They excel at organizing and storing data, but rely on integrations with other tools to activate that data and make it actionable across marketing, sales, and customer support. This is where Customer Data Platforms like Twilio come into play, bridging the gap between raw data storage and business activation.

Predictive Traits are a leap forward in how businesses leverage customer data to drive engagement. By using machine learning to identify future behaviors, such as likelihood to churn or intent to purchase, Predictive Traits allow companies to act with foresight rather than hindsight. These insights help businesses not only understand their customers better but also deliver hyper-relevant, timely experiences that deepen loyalty and drive growth.

In 2024, Predictive Traits on the Twilio Segment platform grew significantly, with a remarkable 57% increase year over year. Out of these, 24% were connected to destinations, showing how businesses are integrating predictive insights into their broader engagement strategies.

Twilio’s Predictive Traits are most commonly synced with platforms like BigQuery, Iterable, and Mixpanel, highlighting the diverse ways businesses are using this data to optimize advertising, marketing automation, and customer success. These destinations enable teams to create targeted campaigns, proactive support strategies, and personalized recommendations based on customers' predicted actions.